Morrissey / “Your Arsenal”: ‘Definitive Master’ CD+DVD reissue

Morrissey‘s third solo album, 1992’s Your Arsenal will be reissued on 25 February 2014 by Parlophone Records.

The Mick Ronson produced long player was a return to form following the disappointing Kill Uncle and featured five singlesincluding We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful and You’re The One For Me, Fatty.

This reissue is being branded the ‘Definitive Master’ and is a new remastering of the album. The CD will include a bonus DVD, featuring a previously unreleased live concert recorded at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on 31 October 1991, with the band that would record Your Arsenal.
Being Morrissey, he has to tinker a little bit and the original version of Tomorrow is replaced by with the US Mix. Thankfully the cover photo has not been changed, but like the Viva Hate reissue, perfectly good typography has been needlessly altered. Also, the lets-pretend-this-is-a-sixties-record placement of the Parlophone logo (top right) is getting a little tiresome. The original cover looked cleaner and more attractive than this new treatment.

The Your Arsenal ‘definitive master’ reissue will also be available on heavyweight gatefold vinyl.

For those who care, like the original issue in 1992, Your Arsenal is re-issued on Sire records. What that means is NO Parlophone logo nor the word “stereo” exist on the front cover. By sight, even with the slight change in font, it looks very true to the original. The back cover and inside of gatefold are another story, but still. Same thing for CD. No Parlophone logo. There’s no such thing as Parlophone in the US. If you remember, even the Beatle albums, whether the UK tracklist or the US version, they were all released on Capitol records here. Stuff on Parlophone later like Blur and Pet Shop Boys were always just EMI here.

Received this yesterday, have to say the picture quality of the DVD is pretty poor, looks like a bootleg, but a decent setlist so not too many complaints. Only watched the first few songs, and so clearly a VHS transfer. I had read that the sound quality of the DVD was “a bit flat”, but to be fair, it sounded ok. I kind of like the contrary nature of a remastered CD, with a bootleg quality DVD

I wouldn’t say the DVD is unrelated to the album as it was an early show with the band that made the record – but I hope to see a show from the YA tour officially released at some point. Agree the b-sides being left out is egregious but perhaps Morrissey is taking a cue from similar artists with fanatic fanbases (Bowie, Costello) with plans to re-re-rerelease “ultimate” & “definitiv”e editions of the same record in years to come…. Still a welcome release!

You are right Steve this is a fantastic album, and yes it would have been great to see Mick Ronson produce further albums for Morrissey.
However, as we all now know, Morrissey falls out with everyone very quickly. This never happened with Mick Ronson because sadly he died.
Reading the reviews of Morrissey’s autobiography (I could not bring myself to buy it) it seems the only good word he has to say about anyone in the music industry is Kirsty McCall. No doubt had she not also died he would be spitting venom about her as well.
I was a huge Mozza fan but I can no longer separate the music from the nasty bitter person he has become.
Try reading some of his ‘statements’ on the po-faced fan site ‘true-to-you’, The last one is surely the drunken rant of an internet troll who has not changed out of his dressing gown for a week.
A huge huge shame given how great he once was!

What a disappointment. No b-sides (which are all fantastic) and a concert unrelated to this album. So sad. And this is my favorite Morrissey album. I was devastated when Mick Ronson died because I was hoping he’d produce every Morrissey album after this one.

Paul English – everyone has different standards and a few dollars for songs like Seasick remastered is 100% up to me. I have the money so I’ll spend it this way… I may even buy 2 copies of the vinyl in addition to the CD with a DVD of my first-ever Morrissey show. It was that important of a record to me. There’s more to life than saving money.

Sorry Steven, the point I was making related to remasters and sound quality.

While the inclusion of the DVD is welcome, I would be surprised if the sound of the original album is improved. Brickwalling and compression have ruined a lot of remasters, I prefer quieter CDs with plenty dynamic range . i.e. they sound great when turned up.

I was AT THAT SHOW!!! It was Halloween and it felt like Halloween with all the secondhand clothes. This was around the time he first debuted his new rockabilly-esque band (Boz, Alain, Spencer, Gary Day), which was the beginning of my favorite-ever Morrissey solo period. FANTASTIC SHOW. And, no deletions??? No “We’ve dropped Fatty and Seasick and replaced them with a demo of Nancy Sinatra singing Tomorrow”. Apart from replacing the UK version of Tomorrow with the U.S. mix, it was left alone! Love it! This album and Vauxhall were (are) in desperate need of re-mastering! Very excited about this one. As far as the artwork, this is the most true to original of ANY re-issue!! The original had the His Master’s Voice Logo…this one is on Parlophone so he dropped the HMV logo for the Parlophone one… no big deal. The best part for U.S. fans like myself?? With Parlophone being acquired by Warner Music, they issue all of Morrissey’s stuff now, in all formats – including digital and vinyl – in the U.S. I can get the normal pricing and free shipping…

This reissue obviously trumps the Kill Uncle reissue from last year and I’m absolutely looking forward to it (like I do every Moz release!). However, I don’t understand the inclusion of items from a different record or “era” that happens with Moz reissues. It seems to me that this DVD would have been a better inclusion on the Kill Uncle re-issue (and surely would have led to better sales)…making way, of course, for a DVD of a gig that was actually played in support of Your Arsenal to be included with this reissue. Nonetheless, I’ll be thrilled to have this when it comes out!